IT IS HERE! Forumshire fanfic collection

Fast facts:

• Words: 937,834*
  
• Pages of 8.5.x11 paper: 1,717
  
• Equivalent pages in a print book: 3,126**
  
• PDF file size: 7 MB
  
• Chapters: 108
  
• Contributing authors: 15
  
• Years represented: 2011-2017
  
• Time spent on this project: a fuckload

*For reference: TH, LOTR, and the Silm combined are roughly 706,000. The five longest Harry Potter novels combined are roughly 922,000.
**Using the common estimate of 300 words per page

Disclaimer: This would benefit from an extra round of proofreading from the top, but for that to be worth it I need to let this sit for a while so I can come back with fresh eyes, but I dunno if/when I actually will get back to it. Certainly not for the rest of this semester, since I have two major assignments coming due in May that I need to start focusing on. I really wanted to get this out of the way first, though. Consider it an advance reader's copy kinda deal.

Gorgeous page pwn, Eldo!

Also... DAY-the-fucking-UM!

Your introduction is quite elucidating for all the weird nonsense that I've had to put with over the years.

A job well done, at least so far in my read-through, Eldo!

Additional factoids:

Chapters per author*
Orwell: 43
Mrs Figg: 23
Petty: 15
Eldorion: 8
Norc: 6
Amarië: 5
Kafria: 2
Tinuviel: 2
bungobaggins: 2
Lancebloke: 2
Bluebottle: 2
Lorient Avandi: 1
Baingil: 1
Turembar: 1
Ally: 1

*Gives full and equal credit to co-authors of jointly-written chapters as well as to everyone who participated in planning for Shadows in the West. Does not include the Introduction in my tally nor does it account for short pieces appended to chapters written by others (of which there are several).


Ten longest stories (not series)
01. Gingerlocks and the Three McTyrants (Petty): ~133,000 words
02. Haddon Hall (Turembar & Figg): ~55,100 words*
03. The Darkest Day (Petty): ~43,200 words
04. There and Back Again/Finding Odo (Orwell): ~26,500 words
05. The Mystery of Mister Figg (Eldo): ~25,700 words
06. The Jimmy (Orwell): ~25,400 words
07. A Midsummer Nights Dream (Petty): ~23,800 words
08. The Great Forumshire Story (Lance): ~19,000 words*
09. Work-a-Hobbit (Amarië & Norc): ~18,600 words
10. Love Is A Doing Word (Eldo): ~18,200 words*

*Indicates an unfinished tale.

Amarië wrote:Gorgeous page pwn, Eldo!

Also... DAY-the-fucking-UM!

Thank you! I hope that you enjoy reading it if/when you have the time.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Your introduction is quite elucidating for all the weird nonsense that I've had to put with over the years.

A job well done, at least so far in my read-through, Eldo!

Cheers, Forest. That was my hope for the Introduction so I'm glad it seems to have worked.

{{Read the intro and some of the commentary to both Council of sections- great stuff so far Eldo, n excellet intro- informative, sets the scene for whats to come clearly and has Forumshre trademark tongue in cheek humour, perfect- though some of the line placement seems out in the council stuff occasionally- but nothing to worry about- I am frankly stunned you managed to complete this massive undertaking in this amount of time. A sincere well done. }}

Thanks Petty! I'm a little surprised too. I was making speedy progress as it was but I'm basically out of time for having to start taking my final projects seriously since I don't want to half-ass them. I know I'm not able to be invested in too many things at once, so I worked for 22 straight hours to finish this today (with several breaks to eat, caffeinate, and stretch my legs, of course) so that I can refocus--after sleeping, anyway.

The formatting in the Council stuff looks a little weird since most of the lines are so short, but I'm sure there are plenty of errors I didn't catch. Hopefully it looks clean enough for the most part, though I didn't use professional typesetting software, just good ol' LibreOffice.

Hopefully some of the later editorial comments will be interesting as well. One of the main things I tried to do was give context and draw connections between related stories, but there were a few places where I went a little further, including my detective work finding the earliest mention of Mrs Figg and eels (not in a fanfic). And there are a small handful of stories with never-before-posted behind-the-scenes material about how they might have ended, including both of my unfinished Needlehole ones.

I'd actually be very curious to get to the bottom of the eel wrangling motif. Unfortunately encryption brackets don't show up in the fiction. Hmm...bucky does show up. I wonder if we have the first mentions of that captured?

halfwise wrote:I'd actually be very curious to get to the bottom of the eel wrangling motif.  Unfortunately encryption brackets don't show up in the fiction.  Hmm...bucky does show up.  I wonder if we have the first mentions of that captured?

The Archet Bugle uses encryption brackets for author's notes but yeah, it's not really a plot element anywhere. I'm not sure where the earliest use of brackets was, but an early form of encryption originated on the Old Forum, and can be seen in this rescued thread:

https://www.forumshire.com/t152-the-curious-tale-of-a-missing-banks

As for the eel thing, it's explained in the Tales of Other Forumshirans chapter.

I shall have to go back and read that in detail, as it predates me. It seems the nascent form of encryption brackets "(( ))" was already recognized as such, and the later the full encryption brackets "{{{ }}}" were used, but were not recognized or responded to as such. Beginnings are always murky.

Like in a crocodile attack!

{{Wonder on what fateful historic day Figg and I had our first fight! }}}

Pettytyrant101 wrote:{{Wonder on what fateful historic day Figg and I had our first fight!  }}}

Long was that doom foretold  

this looks fantastic, when I have some time I am going to have a enormous nostalgia trip reading everyones work.

I was just about to post that quote Figgs.

A stupendous achievement! Wow!

That man is a human dynamo ( Eldo I mean )

Holy crap, I just scrolled up to the top of the page for the first time - can't believe I missed this!

Plane ride tomorrow, you know what I'll be reading...

What a pleasure to have the Councils of Odo and Tyrants compiled! They still make me laugh like nothing else. Too bad emoticons are not possible in a text format.

Thank you, everyone. I hope you guys enjoy reading it. Of course, most of the credit belongs to the people who actually wrote the stories and my contributions are only a small percentage of the total, but given the scale of this undertaking I would love to hear people's thoughts and reactions, whatever those may be. Though I know that reading this much is itself an undertaking and don't necessarily expect anyone to go through cover to cover.

Fake edit:

halfwise wrote:What a pleasure to have the Councils of Odo and Tyrants compiled!  They still make me laugh like nothing else.  Too bad emoticons are not possible in a text format.

There were a few chapters where the lack of multimedia had an impact but I hope that the essence of them is preserved. The Council chapters cracked me up when importing them; I'm glad I'm not the only one!

Errata (post no. 1)

Tales of Ally, Baingil, and Squach, p. 67, editorial comments: The reference to The Mystery of Mister Figg concerns a scene between Nora and Orwell, not Nora and Odo. I was inconsistent in a few places in how I discussed alt accounts. In the introductory comments to Shadows in the West (p. 48) I essentially treated the various members of the Banks clan as separate people, but in this instance I conflated two different personas to a greater degree than I should have.

The Darkest Day, p. 716, editorial comments: Petty's Gingerlocks is approximately 133,000 words long (as mentioned in the Editor's Note on p. 2), not 132,000.

MacPetty: The Scottish Play, p. 1034, editorial comments: MacPetty bears similarities to Petty O' Tyrant. No baring is involved.

Amarie's Adventures in Forumland, p. 1105, footnote 2: This is the video from the picnic, but having listened to it again I think I was mistaken about it being the same song as the one in the deleted video.

You are our own Christopher Tolkien, Eldo... ... ... or maybe Christopher Robin... err... maybe you’re both!

Would that make Petty our Eeyore? And perhaps Odo is Owl?

Aha!  I see encryption brackets referred to in Council of Odo, page 19!!  But I don't know if that was the first use or playing off something in the comments.  Shall have to dig through the Council of Odo.

Though digging back through my memory I seem to recall encryption brackets were in full swing when Petty rescued me to the new forum.  And the council of Odo happened about the same time.


EDIT: yep, one of the first comments was wondering why the Council wasn't using encryption brackets. Did they start in the old forum or only the new one?

Interesting to read back through. Got caught out several times wondering who wrote some of the tales... then checked back in the Contents and found it was by some anonymous Archet Bugle writer!

I should not be surprised as the Bugle writers were and are known to write off the cuff, with the editing done at the time, so nothing gets consigned to long term memory... I did wonder with some of the things if Eldo edited and added a creative touch or two. Really laughed at some things and wondered where some of the concepts and turns of phrase came from... the Forumshire Muse, I presume.

I also now wonder at some of those Wholesome Tales.... not sure that they are all that Wholesome at times, though I hope I don’t offend anyone by suggesting that possibility...